The String
The String is weekly think radio featuring conversations and features on culture, media and American music - anchored by veteran journalist and broadcaster Craig Havighurst. Music makers, enablers, instigators and documentarians are featured with enough time to go deep and burrow into issues, while letting the music play too. Music news, previews, Time Machine Tape and 90 Second Spins round out the hour.
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Average duration
- 59 minutes
- Episodes
- 308
- Years Active
- 2017 - 2025
Sierra Hull
Episoded 313: Sierra Hull brings a measure of small-town delight and innocence to roots and bluegrass that perfectly compliments her innate gifts and her formal schooling in high level music-making. …
Bluegrass Singer Russell Moore
Episode 312: In one of the big surprise stories in roots music of the past six months, bluegrass star and IIIrd Tyme Out founder Russell Moore was named the newest member of Alison Krauss and Union S…
Red Young
Epidode 311: When I met lifelong musician Red Young on board Delbert McClinton’s Sandy Beaches Cruise, I knew I had to interview him. He’s had one of those journeyman’s careers that ties together all…
Gary Nicholson
Episode 310: It would be hard to name any songwriter in Nashville’s long history whose work has been recorded by more stars across more genres of music than Gary Nicholson. The Texas native came to N…
Sam Grisman
Episode 309: Sam Grisman, the 35-year-old son of mandolin icon David “Dawg” Grisman, grew up in a unique and supercharged musical environment, to put it mildly. Jerry Garcia was coming over all the t…
Kaitlin Butts
Episode 308: For country singer Kaitlin Butts, 2023 was very good and 2024 was even better, with an Americana Award nomination, praise in Rolling Stone magazine, and festival dates she’d been dreamin…
Mickey Raphael
Episode 307: It was 50 years ago this month that a 23-year-old Mickey Raphael felt his way through his first recording session with his relatively new band boss Willie Nelson. And it was no small thi…
Jessie Scott
Episode 306: This one’s personal. Eight years ago, when we launched the Roots Radio format on the historic signal WMOT 89.5 FM, a few of us knew we could have no better program director than Jessie S…
Jerron Paxton
Episode 305: Traditional acoustic blues has seen one of its periodic revivals, with more younger African American artists involved than any time I can remember. No survey of the scene would be legit …
Humbird
Episode 304: One of my highlights of 2024 was finally getting to see Minneapolis folk rocker Humbird, an artist whose three recordings display an unusual degree of sonic imagination and bandcraft, ev…
Grayson Capps
Episode 303: “I like dark songs. I don't know why,” says Grayson Capps early on in our interview. “Cheerful songs don't do much for me.” The Lower Alabama bluesman and songwriter is talking about bot…
Producer/Musicologist Joe Boyd
Episode 302: Joe Boyd is one of the most accomplished and eclectic record producers in the story of popular music. As an American living in London, he helped break psychedelic folk rock pioneers The …
Uncle Lucius and Yarn
Episode 301: Americana music has been most conspicuously represented in the last few years by songwriting, band-leading artists, including Jason Isbell, Sierra Ferrell, and Billy Strings. Flash back …
Gaby Moreno
Episode 300: When Gaby Moreno was announced as an official showcasing artist at this Fall’s Americanafest, it stirred a tingle of recognition in me, but I had to do some digging to realize what a big…
Danny Paisley and John Reischman
Episode #299: While the public has become hyper aware of Billy Strings on his rocket ride to the top of bluegrass, only a small retinue of the music’s traditional veteran artists have achieved popula…
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and AJ Lee
Episode 298: Molly Tuttle is the link in common between two exceptional breakout artists during an exciting era of bluegrass music. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is the electrifying fiddle player in Tuttle’s b…
JesseLee Jones and Robert's Western World
Episode 297: It’s an immigrant story like no other. JesseLee Jones pined for something bigger growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He got glimpses of American music and a guitar, and with that a long jou…
Sophie Gault plus Wyatt Ellis
Episode 296: With Americanafest landing in Nashville, Craig Havighurst looked over the many artists breaking out of Music City and got especially excited about Baltic Street Hotel by rocking songwri…
Stephanie Lambring
Episode 295: Stephanie Lambring’s new album - her second - is called Hypocrisy, and it blew me away on first listen because of the way its crafty, understated production set up some mind-jarring and …
Rhett Miller of Old 97's
Episode 294: Formed in Dallas in 1992, Old 97’s became one of the seminal bands of the alternative country movement, alongside Whiskeytown, Son Volt, the Bottle Rockets and BR549. At its heart was th…